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Stitch by Stitch: Traces I Made with Needle and Thread
Reviews
Written by Mizuki TANAKA   
Published: September 24 2009

fig. 2 Zon Ito "Nanjing duck" (2008); photo: KEI OKANO, courtesy of Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum

fig. 1 Sayaka Akiyama (2009); photo by Hideto NAGATSUKA, courtesy of Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum

    The subtitle of this exhibition is “Traces I Made with Needle and Thread”. The “I” is a tricky word. It is often used by women as the first person singular pronoun. In its Japanese subtitle, the “I” is written using hiragana (Japanese syllabary characters), which gives us a softer image than kanji (Chinese characters). This contributes to strengthening the feminine impression of the “I” included in the subtitle.
    When we hear the term “embroidery”, most of us imagine a woman who is using a needle with her fingers sensitively. In traditional Western-style paintings there are many scenes in which submissive-looking women are embroidering at home. Stitching work has been considered as a menial job done by women or someone who serve a noble person.
    Nevertheless, nowadays in the field of modern art, embroidery has become established as a method of artistic expression. For example, a modern artist, Zon Ito, has presented his works in exhibitions and art festivals held in museums. This seems to show that stitching work has changed from being regarded as a trivial activity within a narrow framework, such as a family system, to being considered as “art” with a social meaning. This makes me feel that Ito is saying, “I do not make embroideries at home for someone but to express myself.” So, has stitching work come to be used to express “myself”? Indeed, the “I” included in the subtitle can be construed as both the subject of the embroideries and the person who creates them, but anyway, I would like to focus on the creator’s self-consciousness and the question of for whom the exhibits were created.

fig. 4 Kei Takemura (2007); Takahashi Collection, courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery

fig. 3 Asami Kiyokawa "Complex-voice" (2007); photo by Takemi Art Photos, courtesy of Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum

    In this exhibition, we can enjoy looking at creations made by eight artists, including men and women. Most exhibits were created using private themes, as shown in the subtitle of this exhibition. Sayaka Akiyama made an embroidery on a map to trace a road which she often walked along [fig. 1], and Zon Ito stitched something like a drawing whose subject is difficult to grasp at first glance [fig. 2]. Asami Kiyokawa expressed women’s complexes about their bodies from her woman’s perspective [fig. 3], and in the work entitled “Someone whom I have known and do not know walking upstairs in A. City and W. City” [fig. 4], Kei Takemura used thread to depict the figures of people whom he had met in town. Aiko Tezuka embroidered various kinds of subjects, such as her favorite paintings, on a cloth which is large enough to reach the ceiling [fig. 5]. In the exhibition room, each exhibit conveyed to me its own self-assertiveness, such as “I…..”, “I…..”, and “I…..”!
    Apart from Kiyokawa who created an exhibit with the theme of “women”, the other exhibitors seemed to flaunt themselves exclusively. Home can be said to be a kind of society although it is isolated from others. Nevertheless, each creator in this exhibition made his/her exhibit - embroidery - in his/her narrow and isolated world that was not home. Each exhibit gave me the impression that I was being kept out of the creator’s world as an outsider, and only the artist could retreat into his/her world. This reminds me of the following letter written by Franz Kafka:

fig. 6 Ruriko Murayama "mantle" (2009); collection of Forever Museum of Contemporary Art, courtesy of YAMAMOTO GENDAI

fig. 5 Aiko Tezuka (2009); courtesy of Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum

“Living in one’s own house and cutting off all outside things by not closing the door of one’s own room or apartment but shutting the door of the entrance to one’s own house against the outside world represents a really particular feeling”.*1

    There is an inward-looking perspective, just like retreating into one’s house where one no longer has to work for other people. Why did each exhibitor depict “I (himself/herself)”? For whom did he/she express “I (himself/herself)”? Each “I” depicted in the exhibits shown to us by the creators and the museum is a place where the relationship with others is broken off, which makes us feel as if “I” has been locked in our minds.

    Here, I would like to review other exhibits created by Ruriko Murayama and Atsushi Yoshimoto. Murayama expressed a repressed feeling by stitching excessive decoration on bodies and black cloaks [fig. 6], while in the creation named “nui project” [fig. 7], Yoshimoto tenaciously embroidered many thin lines. These two works were created with the aim not of expressing the creators' ideas themselves but of making the viewers conscious of the significance of stitching or the presence of “people who embroidered” beyond the individuals who created the exhibits.

fig. 8 Tsunao Okumura (2001); courtesy of Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum

fig. 7 Atsushi Yoshimoto (nui project) "Untitled" (2005); courtesy of Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum

    Above all, I would like to draw attention to Tsunao Okumura’s work entitled “Guard Man’s Stitching Works” [fig. 8], which is composed of a photograph and an installation. The photo shows a car park attendant's room from which light is being shed over a corner of a dim underground parking area. Within the room there is a well-built man wearing glasses and a manly dark blue uniform. This is the person who created the work. He is staring at a cloth. The picture seems to have been taken secretly, which makes us feel as if the creator intended to hide his act - embroidering - since the general notion is that stitching is a feminine job. In addition, it provides us with a completely different perspective of the subject to that of women in old paintings. Traditionally, women have been depicted as objects of the viewers and are therefore placed within a picture plane created using excellent composition. The man taken in this photo is embroidering a book jacket, using a design filled with characters which are usually associated with men. In other words, he is creating something necessary for daily life himself. The surface of the embroidery has been filled with fine seams, which makes us feel that the creator selected subjects which contribute to bringing the act, “embroidering”, to the viewer’s attention rather than expressing himself. Okumura considered the man taken in the picture not as a subjective existence, “I”, but as an objective figure of “a man”, while taking the photo of himself. Through this work, he intended to make the viewers pay attention not to a “thing” - stitching work - but to an “act” - stitching - which contributes to making them strongly aware of how stitching has been considered over a long period of history.

    This exhibition, in which various roles of embroidery are shown, may give us some new perspectives on stitching.
(Translated by Nozomi Nakayama)

Notes
*1
"La Terre et les rêveries du repos", Written by Gaston Bachelard, Translated by Takao Aeba, Shichosha, 1970, p. 118
Regarding the letter written by Kafka, I would like to note that he referred not only to the inside of a house but to the outdoors as follows:
“In addition, going out of one’s own house and, immediately after that, stepping into the snow which covers a silent town……”

In another book, the same part of the letter as extracted in the article and this note was translated as follows:
“Living at the place…, how interesting it is to have one’s own house and live out of sight by shutting the door not of a room but of the entrance of one’s house! Furthermore, it makes us feel special when we can leave our footprints in the snow which covers a silent town if only we get out of our houses.”
(“Franz Kafka”, Written by Max Brod, Translated by Hikaru Tsuji and Koichiro Saio, Misuzu Shobo, 1955, p. 194)

The above description is about a house where Kafka, who had been seeking a silent place to write his novels, decided to stay. Although Kafka prepared this house to live in after marrying his girlfriend, he never actually married her.
Last Updated on July 05 2010
 

Editor's Note by Satoshi KOGANEZAWA


I found a new initiative in this exhibition in that it was held as a “modern art exhibition” using the theme of “stitches”. Nevertheless, through this exhibition, I could enjoy looking at works from a wide variety of genres, although most of them had little emotional impact on me. The only exhibit that drew my attention was the “Guard's Stitching Works”, which was created by Tsunao Okumura. Below his stitching work and the photograph which was taken of the scene where it was created, a set of exhibits are displayed which give us various images of his workplace, such as his uniform, notebook, watch and stitching work which has been partially completed. In fact, the work is comparable in size to two facing pages of a paperback book, but the surface of the cloth on which he tenaciously made the “stitches” (the act of working using a needle and thread), gave me an overwhelming impression. This is a fine example of a remarkable artwork which attracts viewers regardless of the genre into which it has been classified by others, whether that is “modern art” or “stitching work ”. (Translated by Nozomi Nakayama)


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